The pigment dyeing of cellulosic textile materials is well known. The conventional process for dyeing cellulosic textile materials comprises padding these materials with a bath containing anionic or neutral pigment colour dispersions, an anionic binder, a latent acid-liberating catalyst, a crosslinking agent, an anti-migrating agent, and other additives. The textile materials are then dried at about 100.degree. C. and then further heated at 150.degree. C. for about 5 minutes to cure the pigment colours and film-forming binders on the textiles.
There are numerous problems associated with the conventional method of dyeing cellulosic materials. For example, because the cellulosic surface has a uniform negative charge and the pigment dispersions commercially available are also anionic in nature, there is repulsion between the pigment particles and the cellulosic surface during the padding operation. This leads ultimately to light shades along with poor leveling on the cellulosic materials even when these materials are padded from a bath containing a high concentration of pigment dispersions. For this reason, it is difficult to dye the cellulosic materials in dark shades.
In addition to these problems, there are other disadvantages in using the conventional process for dyeing cellulosic materials. For instance, the colours often thermomigrate to one side of the textile thereby producing poor leveling of the shade. Moreover, the dry and wet crock fastness and the washing fastness of the pigment-dyed cellulosic materials are generally poor. Therefore, there is a need in the art to provide a method of pigment dyeing cellulosic materials and other anionic textile materials that overcomes these problems.